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Updated: June 9, 2025
The snags were even thicker than on the upper Ancobra, and were far more dangerous than on the St. John's. In places the mangrove fallen from the banks had taken root in the river-bed. In fact, unless some exertion be soon made, even the present insufficient channel will be blocked up. At the Abonsá embouchure Mr.
Tumento was found by observation to lie in N. lat. 4º 12' 20" and in W. long. The latter figure would apply only by doubling the windings of the bed. This ascent of the river convinced me more than ever that Enfrámadié is the proper terminus of its navigation. I passed the next day at Tumento, which proved to be only half the distance usually supposed along the Ancobra bed from its mouth.
The bed is set in high, steep banks submerged during the rains; and the narrowness of the mouth, compared with the upper part, made it run, after the late showers, into the Ancobra like a mill-race. In fact, the paddlers were compelled to track in order to make headway.
In the first few minutes the path trends southwards; it then assumes and keeps an easterly direction. Here is a water-parting: the many little beds, mostly full of water, flow either north towards the Abonsá or south and westwards to the Ancobra.
On an arenaceous strip projecting from the western edge the women were washing and panning where the bottom of the digging was below that of the river. This is an everyday sight on the Ancobra, and it shows what scientific 'hydraulicking' will do.
He had been in charge of ten men for five months, during which he had not received a farthing of pay. Consequently his gang had struck work. Thus chatting we followed the cleared path leading up the right bank of the little Akankon creek: now dry, it is navigable for canoes during the rains, and falls into the Ancobra under a good corduroy bridge near the landing-ramp.
After the gape of the Ancobra River the foreshore gradually bends for a few miles from a west-east to a north-south rhumb, and forms a bay within a bay.
The coal-tar was suggested by my nautical companion; and, for the first time on the Ancobra River, we exchanged the bouquet d'Afrique for the smell of Europe. The big crate stands high upon the right bank, here rising about twenty feet, and affording a pleasant prospect of breezy brown stream deeply encased in bright green forest.
I then ascended the Ancobra, in order to inspect the Butabué rapids, said to be the end of canoe-navigation. We passed on the right a reef and a shallow of conglomerate, washed out of the banks and forming a race; there is another reef with its rip at Aroásu.
The Mankuma Hill, on the right bank, belonging to the Franco-English Company, is somewhat taller than its neighbours: as usual in this silted-up archipelago, it trends from the north-east to the south-west. I had already shot the Ancobra River when paddling up, and was not over lucky when coming down.
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